On Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, there is something called The Heart of Gold Short Film Festival. It recognises that short films have an odd tendency to often explore fairly dark themes. Heart of Gold has responded to this tendency by presenting ‘international short films that are entertaining, thought-provoking, hilarious and express a positive view of the world and humanity.’
Shorts at the Dark Mofo Festival in Hobart, presented on two occasions during the festival, is Heart of Gold’s Doppelgänger. Each short film is as dark or darker than the last. While there might be a latent expectation from the audience of a moment of humour or glimmer of joy at some point during the screening, this remains unfulfilled. It is desolate the whole way through.
Not that this in any way compromises the quality of the films. All are beautifully shot, thoroughly considered and deeply affecting. Crossbow, the opening film – about a disaffected kid growing up in a troubled family and narrated in near monotone by the kid next door, who we never see – is utterly compelling and devastatingly honest. Cicada, a 2007 documentary by Amiel Courtin-Wilson, is as simple as a story told in close-up by the lonely dude you might meet at the corner bar. ‘What’s hope? Hope is a fucking word with a big hole in it,’ he says: ‘You gotta hope that it’s ok.’ The story he tells is short and violent, graphic and affecting, reminding us that everyone has a story; everyone has a reason for how they are.
There’s also the end-of-the-world drama Transmission, Zak Kilditch’s hot, beautiful precursor to his recent feature film, These Final Hours; Hell’s Gates, the sombre story of cannibalistic Van Dieman’s Land colonial escapees; and Paradise – which I had to leave the cinema for – a bizarre collage of guitars screeching unpleasantly over tattered pornographic pinups, exploring, perhaps, differing conceptions of paradise. The only possibility of redemption (other than maybe Transmission) is a moment in Deeper than Yesterday, but that’s set three months into a Russian submarine journey filled with aggressive men, so it’s still pretty challenging. The darkest of all is probably the closing film Blue Tongue by Justin Kuzel (director of Snowtown), which features no overt violence or grief, but instead just demonstrates the potential for these things – illustrates, again, where it comes from.
In combination, Shorts is a masculine, Australian exploration of some of the darkest aspects of the human psyche. It’s an hour and 45 minutes of it, and there is no coming up for air.
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
Dark Mofo: Shorts
State Cinema, Elizabeth St, North Hobart
Dark Mofo Festival
www.darkmofo.net.au
15 and 17 June
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